Of course, every part of you can be happy! You can build a strong business with limited time while you establish a healthy work life “blend”, as Donna puts it. It is all possible and then some when you know how! In today’s episode of the podcast, I chat with my lovely guest, the amazing Donna Hann, on exactly how to blend your work and your life so every part of you is happy!
Introduction
You are listening to the Hayley Osborne show with me, Hayley, your host. This is your place to learn how to become the superhero marketer in your business to become the number one in your local community, both online and in your surrounding areas. Every week, I’ll be teaching you how you can achieve the best out of your marketing your business and be the most fearless superhero version of yourself. Small business owners are the backbone of the economy. And I’m here to demystify local area marketing to help you reach more customers, between myself from South Australia and my wildly inspiring guests from across the world. I’m so excited to discuss all things marketing your business with you; I believe in you. So let’s get started.
Hello, my lovely, awesome friends and welcome to another episode of The Hayley Osborne show. This is episode 55. And this is the first guest episode I have had for season two of 2023. I’m very, very excited to bring you my beautiful guest Donna Han. Donna is a powerhouse business owner and mum. In this episode, I chat all about establishing a healthy work-life blend and how to build a strong business with limited time, aka being a mum. This one is special to me because you know I am a mum and I am learning about how to build a strong business with limited time. Donna is honestly the best person to chat too about this. She is a coach to entrepreneurial women, she is an online programme creator, she is a business strategist, she is a mum of two boys and she has her own podcast called she’s in business. Without further ado, let’s get into today’s episode.
Transcription
Hayley Osborne:
Hi, Donna, and welcome to the Hayley Osborne show. I am so glad that you are joining me today. I have read out your stellar bio separately. I like to get everyone to tell the listeners who you are and what you do.
Donna Hann:
My name is Donna Han. I live in a sunny beachside town in regional Queensland. We’re about 600 K’s north of Brisbane I live here with my family. I’ve got two boys, a 10-year-old, a seven-year-old, and my husband.
My business journey started, when I look back at it, was in my parent’s footsteps. They were immigrants from the UK. And when we landed in Australia, it was like, okay, what are we going to do? And they started their own business. I think that that gave me a really good understanding of what running a small business was really all about. I saw them take it to great heights and then I saw it all crushed down, as well as, as their marriage. That was I guess, really important for me. I never realised that until I kind of dug a little bit deeper a couple of years ago as to why I was so fierce and interested in small business ownership.
I am a business coach; I’ve started grown and sold three successful businesses over the years. One with three kids and the others with kids in tow. The business that I represent here today is the space that I love. I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world and that I get to help and support and coach women in business to go from feeling really overwhelmed, exhausted and on the path to burnout whilst juggling their business and raising a family. To really help them to transform through that and become a thriving business owner where they’re feeling energised and excited and aligned to their core values as they’re growing their business to become what it is in their vision, you know, and that’s different for everybody. That’s why I feel like I have the best job in the world because I get to work with the women who, I guess have, that hunger to be more than just a mum. That’s why I always talk about how the programmes that I create are for mums who are made for more because I believe that, yes, she can be an amazing mum. Yes, she can be present in the moment with them. If you build the kind of business that aligns with your core Heart Centre and shape it in a way that also aligns with your responsibilities of being a parent. It’s a lot but it can be done. It’s important to discuss that and share my experiences with other women. They can enjoy the best of both worlds, which I think we are all within our rights to have.
Hayley Osborne:
That’s awesome. I also am so glad that you agreed to come on my podcast because for me I am running a business, I have two very small children. I was doing it before. But things have changed for me, even though I was already a master in my business and then add two kids in and it’s like, wow, things are different. It looks different. It feels different. I’m different, you know, navigating all of that. I wanted to use my podcast as well this year. Yes, I love to talk about marketing. I love to talk about helping business owners. I also want to shine a light on what I’m going through too. It is hard. It’s really hard. What I want to know from you what is a healthy work-life balance? What does that look like? Is it a real thing?
Donna Hann:
Well, I actually don’t like using the word balance. I prefer to use the word blend because I don’t think there will ever be a perfect balance. I think that doesn’t exist. I do think that you can shape your business and your life to be a blend because there are times when, you know, you might be in a position where the kids are not sleeping very well during the day and therefore, when do you get your work stuff done, you also have a responsibility to your clients to show up for them. That might mean that in that moment in time, you’re working at night time because during the day, you just physically can’t do it. That’s where it’s a work-life blend, and it will shift and change; it will ebb and flow at all different seasons of business and life and it’s never going to be perfect. That’s why I don’t use the word balance because it’s just, I don’t know, it’s, it actually feels kind of icky. I don’t like using that word at all.
I remember when I first had my first alone time with my newborn baby when he was first born and in that moment, when I had just given him a bath, we were still in the hospital. I’ve just given him a bath and he was there, and that sudden moment you’re looking at this little baby on your bed dressing him that you go like, Ah, this is now my responsibility. This little person is now something that I have to learn to raise, like, how do I do this? And you just know, you sort of it’s a magical moment. It was a beautiful moment; it was etched into my mind. Later that night said to my husband, look, you go home. I’ve totally got this. I’m so good. Like he’s been amazing. It’s all good and that night was the most horrendous night. On night number three, my milk came in. I was like an emotional mess. I was tired. He wouldn’t settle; it was awful. It was the worst night ever. I went from being in that moment, and I’ve totally got this to be like this. You need to get back here at the hospital now.
Hayley Osborne:
Oh my gosh. Can I just say 100% that having a business has made me a better mother. Because you have peaks and troughs in your business all the time. There are highs, and there are lows. Sometimes the lows feel worse than the highs and being a mom, especially for the first time. It’s exactly the same. It’s like, oh, they’re doing it. It’s working, sleeping and then it’s like, oh, my God, my life is falling apart. You’re about to leave the house. I’ve got to do this thing and then they’ve just shit through their whole outfit and you’re like, huh, I don’t even have this. Why did you have to do this at this time, I think as number two child rolls around, it’s like, you’re gonna do that at that time? Because that’s just what they do to test you.
Donna Hann:
I think it’s that beautiful correlation between business and raising kids that you know, you just get them into a routine or a pattern and then they hit a milestone, or they take a what’s the word when they go backwards? Does Matter regress? When they take that regression, then you’re like, oh, hang on, wait, but look, what’s going on here and it’s the same with business. I think it’s really about that. That healthy work-life blend that the question that you originally started with? I think it’s acknowledging that it’s never going to be perfect. It’s never going to be just right the way that you may want it to be, but it’s about being flexible. It’s about being adaptable, both as a parent and as a business owner and it also really starts with aligning your core, like understanding what your core values are and that does change.
As you mentioned, you’ve changed from where you were before, when you weren’t a parent, to now being a mother. It does; it changes us at our core in ways that I don’t think we necessarily understand or even acknowledge at the beginning because we don’t realise it. I’ve had a lot of time to really dig in and reflect and get to what my core values are because there’s been a few big challenges. I think when you have some really big challenges, both in business and on a personal level, it forces you to then go, Hold on a minute, there’s something here that’s not really working, what’s going on, and getting really clear about what your core values are, and then shaping or reshaping, if you’re already in business, reshaping your business to align with those core values will then help you to unpack your purpose and your life or what you do in your business and why you feel so strongly about it. It’ll help you to really build out all the foundations of your business and the way that you want your business to run, the hours you want to work, the style in which that you want to work, the type of people, your ideal clients and customers that you want to work with. And then, from that, you create your big-picture vision for where you want your business to grow.
I think it also works the same with your family as well right in knowing what your core values are, how you want to shape your little family, and what kind of values and lessons you want to instil for your kids and how you want your relationship to be so that it models to your children as to what a healthy relation relationship really looks like. So that they then can enter healthy relationships when they’re fully grown. It’s all of that. And I think it all really comes from those core values. And it shouldn’t be over underestimated how powerful those things are.
Hayley Osborne:
My parents actually got divorced when I was seven; I think it was and like for me now, like in, you know, my relationship with my future husband, we’re a product of COVID. We were supposed to get married pre-kids, and then lol, our wedding dates, and now we have like the fifth or sixth one coming up this August. It’s ridiculous. We decided to just go and have kids and, you know, marrying into a big Italian family. So like, the small wedding wasn’t really an option and all the things. What does that look like? I’m in, you know, in that where, you know, I want my children to they’re being raised, like with two parents in the house and then love each other. What are those values look like? And it’s lovely. Not saying that; I was raised a certain way. We turned out all right, my brother and I.
My next question was because if you have limited time, right? Whether you are a mum, or whether you are not, whether you might run, I know I have a client of mine, she’s got two businesses and one of them she wants to build more and the other one is just like huge, and she wants to move away from but so I think there are lots of people that are time poor for very different reasons. How would you recommend building a strong business with limited time? So, aka being a mum or aka having two businesses, but you want to focus on the other one, but you can’t?
Donna Hann:
The first word that pops into my head is boundaries. Boundaries are one of those things where I think, especially when we’re being a mom, and growing a business, we want to say yes to so many opportunities, and we want to give and we want to over serve, and we want to impress and we want to build that really strong word of mouth, and all of those kinds of strategies in our business. Often that comes from, you know, surprising people and over-delivering and going above and beyond. I think those things are really important and should be part of your strategy, but I also think that you need to make sure that there are boundaries around that as well. Because if you don’t have boundaries around that, the thing that suffers is your energy, and you’ll burn the candle at both ends. I always talk about making sure that you are building your business in such a way that you’re looking after the three sides of you, which is the business owner. So, the mindset that we have as business owner ensure that that is strong and resilient and that we get back up and we keep falling forwards and always looking for ways to improve it and that kind of thing. Then there’s also the mother; we need to be making sure that we are always nurturing that side of us as well and that we can do those things. Then there’s the self-care element, which is about you when you’re not wearing the business hat when you’re not wearing the mum hat. What about you as a person, as a stand-alone, like a human being, and that can be really hard to pay any attention to when you’re in the thick of, you know, especially when your babies are small, or when your business is really young and you’re in that kind of messy stage or when you’re in that like full scale and growth stage, it can be really hard. What we all know, and this is, I think it’s Dr Libby Weaver, who says, “why don’t we do the things we do and we know the things we know? ” And this is one of those things where you go self-care, we all know, we should be looking after ourselves. We all know that if we don’t work, nothing works. But yeah, it’s often the thing that falls to the bottom of the list.
Where as when we have boundaries in place, it means that we can be really clear about what we’re going to say yes to and what we’re going to say no to because either of those answers will have a knock-on effect on the other. If I say yes to stretching myself and working like crazy hours into the wee hours of the morning, it means that I’m going to wake up probably feeling pretty grumpy because I’m not a great person when I don’t get enough sleep; I might be more snappy with my kids, I might be more snappy with my husband in your situation, Haley, it might affect your milk flow, like there are all these things that happen, right. I’m saying yes to this, but it means I’m also saying no to feeling energised, being my best self, and being present with my kids at that moment because I’m just too tired to be there. Or I can’t give as much to my clients. Or if I say yes to maybe taking on an extra client, and I like to work within school hours. So, if I work past three o’clock, that’s saying that’s giving a message to my kids that doesn’t align with my core values. So, therefore, I’ve got to be really careful with what I say yes and no to, so time management is really important. And boundaries are a massive part of that time management is always asking yourself, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? How could I manage my time more effectively? If I want to do all the things? How am I going to be able to do that? What’s the compromise? Because there will always be a compromise somewhere and you don’t want it to be your own self-care?
Hayley Osborne:
I got really good at actually sharing my calendar with Mark and I have blocked out days where I’m mumming and days where I’m working. As you said, it’s the blend, not the balance, and I have colour-coded the shit out of it because then I can visually without even looking at it. I know, right? Personal, kids, like business strategy, what does that look like membership, where’s my time allocated? I’m not even having to read it, I just see the colours, and I know them now and that has helped me so much with mentally where I’m at that week. It’s such a beautiful feeling.
Donna Hann:
I have a great free planner that people can access, which is a really good way to eliminate that overwhelm and get really clear upon what are the things that are going to move your business forward and do those things. Because I think sometimes, we can get so distracted by shiny things and want to do all of the different things. But they’re not necessarily the things that really need to be done or the things that are going to return you that, you know, moving the needle forward and pushing your business to where you want it to go. So that planner will help you to brain dump everything out of your head to eliminate that overwhelm. It’ll help you map out what things need to be done now and tomorrow, who can you delegate to do what needs to be done at all, and then you can schedule it out day by day in blocks of time to get everything done. The other thing I love that it’s got a checkbox checked. It’s awesome; it’s an awesome little hit of dopamine that we all need to go. Yes, I’m doing it. It may not be being done perfectly, but I’m doing it. I’m in there. I’m living my best life.
Hayley Osborne:
That is awesome. I will grab that. Yeah, where can my listeners grab that planner, please?
Donna Hann:
If you go to www.donnahann.com/freeplanner, you’ll be able to grab it from there. It’s also on the homepage of my website as well.
Hayley Osborne:
So good. And also, if people want to find you, where can they find you? How can we find everything about you so you’re easy to find?
Donna Hann:
So I’ve run a couple of different things. I have an eight-week group coaching programme called ready to rise that will really help you to get clear on what your core values are and how you want to shape your business to move forward, as well as all of the different foundations that you need from a business perspective and setting it all up properly. And there’s also some self-care and tips around like really managing your family as well within that. So there’s that programme. I have my story to success membership, which is a whole bunch of different things thrown in. But basically, some master classes and some on business and mindset. As well as some online networking, and 90-day planning, and all those sorts of things. And then I have my podcast, but you can find all of that stuff on my website.
It’s www.donnahann.com, Instagram is @Donnahann_coach and my podcast, She’s in business. They’re probably the best places to find me.
Hayley Osborne:
So if you are driving, listening to this, or walking or doing other things besides being at your desk with a notepad, the show notes will be on my website, and everything Donna mentioned will be in there for you to access easily so you can find it, Donna, it has been so lovely, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Have loved chatting with you. We have so much in common.
Donna Hann:
Yeah, we really do. And I hope that we can continue our conversations because there’s always so much I learned from you. And hopefully, I can share this with your listeners as well. So thanks for having me on the show.
Hayley Osborne:
I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode. If you have hit subscribe so you don’t miss any new episodes released every Tuesday. And while you’re there, leave me a review. I would absolutely love to read it. Also, don’t forget to tag me at @hayleykosborne over on Instagram and share this podcast with your audience so they can get learning too. If you want more, head over to www.Hayleyosborne.com.au/podcast for today’s show notes and links. I’ve also got an awesome free eBook, a new one waiting for you on my website, the 10 Essentials every local area marketing plan needs and I will catch you next week for another episode of The Hayley Osborne show.
Links:
Donna Instagram
Donna Website
Donna Podcast
Hayley Instagram
Hayley Website
